


Arrangement

by Bookkbaby



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 10:01:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookkbaby/pseuds/Bookkbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Were you ever going to tell me how you feel about me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lurea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurea/gifts).



“Were you ever going to tell me?” Dean asks Castiel quietly, studying the edge of his makeshift weapon with more intensity than the task really requires.

It has only been a few hours since he and Benny have found Cas, but this is the first moment they’ve had to themselves and the question has been weighing more heavily on Dean’s mind as the minutes go by. Now, with Benny checking the perimeter, there’s at least the illusion of privacy.

“Tell you what, Dean?” Cas replies. He’s crouched by the small, smokeless fire at the center of camp, tending it carefully, but his eyes are on Dean. Dean knows; he can feel it. Cas sounds genuinely confused too, and for a moment, Dean hesitates.

But he isn’t wrong. He can’t be.

“You know… that you…” He waves his free hand, still not looking up.

“‘That I’?” Cas prompts when Dean’s voice trails off. Dean takes a deep breath and looks up.

“How you feel about me,” he says. In an instant, Castiel’s face loses its curiosity and gains a guarded, unhappy expression. Cas is the first to look away, dropping his gaze in favor of staring into the fire and feeding it a tiny twig.

“No,” Cas says simply. Dean waits for him to elaborate, but when he does not, Dean gets impatient.

“Why not?” he demands.

“I knew that you would not welcome it,” Cas says, voice clipped. “By the time I realized what I felt, it was already too late.”

“Says who?” Dean asks, pushing himself to his feet only to sit down again moments later, but this time, he is beside Cas. “You should have told me.”

Cas tenses, shoulders slightly hunched as though he’s bracing himself for an attack.

“And what would that have accomplished?” he asks, feeding another twig into the fire. He glances at Dean briefly. “All I want is to redeem myself to you. If I can have your friendship once more-“

“No,” Dean says immediately, then winces when Cas’s face clouds over with resignation. Dean shakes his head. “I mean… fuck, that wasn’t what it sounded like.”

“I understand,” Cas says, rapidly throwing more twigs onto the fire. Dean shakes his head again, more quickly this time.

“No, you don’t. Just… Cas, look at me,” Dean says. Cas reluctantly tears his eyes away from the fire and looks at Dean, expression still guarded, but Dean can see the hopelessness beginning to creep in at the edges.

Dean’s never been good with words. He’s always been a man of action, and so he reaches out, cursing the slight tremor in his hand, and cups Castiel’s face the way he’s imagined doing hundreds of times. Cas stills completely, eyes widening ever so slightly as Dean strokes a fight-callused thumb over the angel’s cheekbone.

“It doesn’t just have to be friendship,” Dean says, voice hoarse, unconsciously leaning in. Cas’s troubled expression grows in Dean’s vision, until he’s too close and all he can see are Castiel’s eyes, the haunting blue he’d been seeing in his dreams since before he admitted to himself what it was he wanted, and it wasn’t an apple-pie life in the ‘burbs with a woman who, for all she tried and how much they cared for one another, would never truly understand what Dean had been through.

Then Cas’s eyes slide closed and he melts into Dean’s touch, closing the last of the distance between them with a choked sound and sealing their lips together.

* * *

 

They don’t talk about it.

They don’t need to.

Every so often, when they’re passing through a relatively safe part of Purgatory — nowhere is ‘safe’, but there are places where you might be able to camp for two or three days and not worry about being attacked by anything stronger than a vampire or small werewolf pack — Benny will offer to check the perimeter and leave for an hour. It’s not much time and even in safe zones, there’s no way either Dean or Cas would get undressed in MonsterLand, but it’s enough for messy handjobs and blowjobs accompanied by heavy makeout sessions.

It’s still the best sex of Dean’s life, though Dean attributes that more to the emotions involved rather than any kind of technical skill.

Cas is always so desperate, so reverent when he touches Dean, so needy and greedy when Dean kisses him, and Dean loves it. He loves making Cas come undone with just his hands or his lips, loves hearing his name choked out when Cas comes, loves leaving marks all over Cas’s skin, and he can only imagine how things will be once they’re out of Purgatory.

Dean’s never been the sentimental type and he’s never been one for romance either, but hell, Cas deserves it. What he has with Cas is different than any of his other conquests, and not just because Cas is a dude; he and Cas didn’t start in bed and then fumble their way through something more, they’ve been slowly falling into ‘something more’ from Day One and are just now acting on the desires that come with it.

When they’re out, Dean wants to take Cas somewhere nice, maybe somewhere that isn’t a greasy diner, though he’s sure Cas wouldn’t care. He wants to rent a room just for them and light it with candles, spread rose petals on the bed and lay Cas down on top of them, then strip him slowly and worship every inch of skin. Dean wants to stretch Cas slowly, get him slick and loose and tease him until Cas is begging for it, then slowly slide in and rock them both to an earth-shaking climax. And it would be earth-shaking, if not earth-shattering.

Dean hasn’t said the words, hasn’t told Cas how he feels, but he doesn’t need to. He shows it in his kisses when they’re done; soft at Castiel’s temple, lazy at his cheek. Dean even cuddles, spooning up behind Cas and slinging an arm over the angel’s waist after they’re both sated.

Cas has gotten quieter, worryingly so, as time drags on, but whenever Dean tries to ask about what’s bothering him, Cas clams up even further. He still melts into Dean desperately when Dean kisses him, though, and so Dean lets his worries sink to the back of his mind, convinced there will be time later to pry the truth from Cas.

* * *

 

Dean’s been out of Purgatory a month, days filled with hunting down a wayward Prophet and nights filled with nightmares of lakes of black water, frightened blue eyes, and a hand that’s torn out of his grasp, when Cas literally drops back into Dean’s life.

Dean and Sam are cruising down a country road, music blasting. One moment, there is nothing in front of them, and the next there’s a familiar figure in a dirty trenchcoat in the middle of the road, stumbling like he’s just been shoved.

Dean slams on the brakes immediately and is out the door almost before his brain has consciously caught up with what is going on.

“Cas!” he calls. Cas looks up, gaze still wild and expression fierce like he expects a fight, but the expression melts away to pure shock when he sees Dean.

“Dean,” he breathes, and Dean couldn’t stop the warmth bubbling up in his chest if he tried.

He closes the distance between them in two steps, wrapping Cas in a tight hug and burying his face in Castiel’s neck. Cas stinks like blood and sweat and dirt, but Dean couldn’t care less because Cas is  _here_. Cas’s weight is real and solid in his arms, and Dean feels the tension he’d been carrying around since Purgatory just evaporate.

Dean breathes in deeply, shuddering slightly, and knows the hug has gone on too long but unable to give a damn because  _Cas is back_.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he says.

Castiel’s arms tentatively come up behind Dean and wrap loosely around his waist.

“I thought the same,” Cas whispers. Dean reluctantly pulls back, but can’t seem to pull his hand away from Castiel’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to let Cas out of arm’s reach. On the contrary, he wants to pull Cas close and kiss him and see for himself that no part of Cas is injured, but this isn’t the time or the place and he hasn’t told Sam any of what went down in Purgatory, though he thinks Sam suspects.

As though summoned, Sam walks up to Cas, a smile on his face.

“You’re alive,” Sam says, and Dean would have mocked him for stating the obvious if his own thoughts weren’t ‘he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive’ on endless repeat.

* * *

 

They go to a bar to celebrate Cas’s miraculous return, partly because copious amounts of alcohol is the best way to celebrate anything and partly because Dean’s hoping to foist Sam off on some unsuspecting woman (unlikely) or a good game of pool (probable) and then take Cas back to their room for a proper homecoming.

Dean’s half-hard just thinking about it.

It doesn’t help that Cas is now dressed in some of Dean’s old clothes, having showered and shaved at the motel before they came here. The marks Dean had left on Cas’s skin their last time together are all faded by now, but the slightly too-baggy clothes Cas wears send a possessive thrill through Dean. It doesn’t even matter that they have no idea who freed Cas or why or how; Dean will worry about that later.

He’s riding high on having Cas back and isn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s ecstatic when Sam abandons them an hour into their celebration in order to hustle some pool, since their funds are low and they’re going to need to get Cas some clothes of his own. Dean is about to suggest to Cas that they return to the motel (Sam can get a taxi) when a busty blonde in a tight red minidress slides into the booth next to Dean, trapping him against the wall.

“Is this seat taken?” she asks Dean, smile wide, teeth white, and breath smelling faintly of alcohol. Dean sends her a flirtatious smile in return out of habit. Before Purgatory — before Cas — he probably would have played along, gone through the steps of bar room courtship, and ended the night in this woman’s bed. Now, though, he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t even want to.

“It’s all yours,” he says. “Me and my friend here were just leaving.”

The woman pouts and turns towards Dean more fully, leaning into his personal space. Dean leans back.

“Are you sure you can’t stay?” she asks, resting her hand on Dean’s arm and squeezing lightly. “I’ll buy you a drink?” She glances at Cas and gives him a slow once-over, expression even more interested. “One for your friend too.”

Cas looks distinctly uncomfortable and Dean suddenly feels a bit irritated with the woman. He gently removes her hand and gives her another smile, this one more forced than the first.

“We’re good,” he says, and though the woman pouts again, she slides off the bench and sashays away, hips swinging.

Dean looks over at Cas and grins apologetically.

“Want to get out of here?” he asks. Castiel’s answering smile is thin, almost wistful.

“That would be nice,” he says. Dean’s grin widens and they leave the bar together.

* * *

 

Dean’s not aware that anything is amiss until, on the drive back to the motel, Cas murmurs: “You didn’t need to refuse that woman’s advances on my account, Dean.”

The words refuse to make sense. Dean knows what they mean, but he can’t quite comprehend it.

“What?” he asks, after a moment of floundering. Cas stares straight ahead, tone carefully even.

“If you wanted to have sex with her, I wouldn’t have stopped you,” he says. “I would have been fine waiting for Sam to drive us back to the motel.”

Dean feels like the rug has been ripped out from under his feet to reveal a hole in the ice. His previous good mood is submerged in subzero temperatures and quickly dies a silent, agonizing death.

“What?” he asks again, hoping to God he’s hearing things wrong.

If Cas doesn’t want him anymore, this is a shitty way of saying it.

But then again, maybe it’s Dean’s fault. Dean’s the one who couldn’t hang on and time is nebulous in Purgatory; one month on Earth could be a year or a day down there. Maybe Cas had realized that he was worth so much more than Dean, that he could do so much better than a man who had gone to Hell and still bore the scars.

Dean’s hands go white-knuckled on the wheel.

“Or, if not her, another woman. You don’t need to… restrict yourself,” Cas says. “I’m aware that our arrangement was only for Purgatory and I don’t expect-“

Dean nearly drives off the road. Cas looks at him then, concerned.

“Dean?”

“‘Arrangement’?” Dean snaps, unable to help himself. Cas nods, jaw clenching.

“When you required pleasure and I provided,” Cas says, voice flat as though he’s describing a business transaction. Dean feels his insides freeze. “I understand that you had no other options.”

Cas continues speaking, flat and seemingly unaffected, but Dean is beyond hearing the words. There’s a low roar in his ears, a rush of blood followed quickly by hot, seething anger.

“So that’s what you thought? That I was  _using_  you?” Dean demands, stomach sinking as he thinks back and realizes that a lot of things now make a sickening kind of sense. Castiel’s greed when Dean kissed him, his refusal to initiate anything, his lengthening silences…

Cas had thought that each time might be their last. He had thought that Dean just couldn’t keep it in his pants and that, obviously, Dean wouldn’t try sleeping with anything that called Purgatory ‘home’.

“You’re human, Dean,” Cas replies softly, tiredly. “You had needs and I was happy to provide. I never expected even that much.” Cas clears his throat. “If you were ‘using’ me, it was only because I wanted you to.”

Dean can’t take it anymore. His anger reaches a fever pitch and he pulls the Impala over, putting it in park and yanking the keys out of the ignition. They’d been driving down a stretch of country road, halfway between the motel and the bar, and no cars had passed them in several minutes. It’s sufficiently private and Dean can’t wait; he’s let this go for too long already.

“Dean?”

Dean just sits there for a moment, gaze hard as steel and focused through the windshield as he collects himself.

“There was no ‘arrangement’ in Purgatory, Cas,” he finally spits out, the word like slime on his tongue. Cas nods, puzzled.

“I can understand if you’d prefer to pretend it didn’t happen-” he begins, but Dean shakes his head and cuts Cas off.

“No, no that is  _not_  what I meant,” he says. He slides a palm down his face from forehead to chin and takes a deep breath before turning to face Cas. “If I just needed to get off, I would have used my hand. I’m a big boy, Cas, I can take care of myself.”

Cas frowns, still confused. Dean mentally curses and bites the inside of his cheek. He loathes talking about his feelings, he always has, but not talking is why they’re here, now, instead of wrapped up in one another back at the motel.

And if Dean wants this to last — which he does, more than anything — he’s going to need to suck it up.

He turns more fully towards Cas, back against the car door, and reaches for the angel’s face just as he had done that first day. There’s no stubble this time, but Castiel’s eyes widen just as they did before.

“Cas,” Dean says, running the pad of his thumb over Cas’s cheekbone. “What we had in Purgatory… it wasn’t because I needed to get off.” Dean swallows thickly. “I said it, didn’t I? I need you.”

“I don’t understand,” Cas breathes, but Dean can see the hope igniting behind his eyes.

“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Dean says bluntly. “I only realized you wanted it too at the river.”

“My feelings are a bit more involved than-” Cas begins, and Dean already knows how that sentence ends, so he cuts Cas off with a kiss. He keeps it gentle and soft, carefully pouring his emotions into it in a way he hadn’t before, assuming that Cas knew.

“Mine too,” he says when he pulls back for air. “Mine too.”

This wasn’t just about having sex, not for either of them. Dean wants more than just nights spent with Cas beneath him or above him; he wants the mornings and the lazy afternoons as well, the days spent doing nothing and the silly fights and the makeup sex, because this is going to  _last_  and they already bicker like an old married couple. Dean wants the welcome home kisses and the goodbye kisses and the goodnight kisses and the nights spent just sleeping next to one another without getting sticky and sweaty first.

And, if he’s allowed, he’ll take eternity Upstairs along with everything else.

Once upon a time, the idea of ‘forever’ would have terrified him, but now that he’s had to live with the reality of Cas’s absence twice, he knows it’s not something he ever wants to experience again.

Hell, if Cas wants, he’ll swear it on his car or in front of a church, or in a city hall with a justice of the peace and Sam as witnesses.

Dean can tell the moment Cas  _gets_  it, because Cas is suddenly almost glowing with joy and he’s kissing back. These kisses aren’t as needy as the ones in Purgatory had been, but they’re just as greedy and demanding to boot. Dean finds he doesn’t much care.

Perhaps one day he’ll say the words, but for now, Dean believes his mouth is being put to better use.

END


End file.
